Standstill
by skyfare
Summary: Three events during Goren's suspension. Sequel to Trapped but could go as a stand alone. Rated T for language.
1. Chapter 1

_Prologue_

After their disastrous trip upstate, Eames sees Bobby a total of three times before she nearly blows his head off (not counting that little worrisome blip when she ran into him at the diner, which didn't count because he blew her off and nothing changed because of it).

They didn't find Donny, of course. Which Eames expected. She suspects that Donny took a bus or called a friend or hell, just _ran _to Nebraska or Michigan or Washington, some state where no one would ever think to look for him.

Goren's taking it hard, though. He's never been one to get his hopes up, but it seems to her that he expected, somehow, that Donny would just turn up.

Well, that's what she thinks, at least. It _would _be easier to read him if he'd maybe return one of her phone calls, but she doubts that's going to happen. It's been a month since their trip, and she hasn't seen him since she dropped him off at his apartment and ordered him to call her. A month of working cases alone and with Ross and with the occasional fleeting partner—clearly, Goren's rubbed off on her because now _she _is the one who can't keep a partner for longer than a case or two. Or maybe she's just getting harsher as the years go on and she sees more death, more destruction, more depravity. Either way, she finds herself snapping at her "partners", at their slowness, their inability to get things quickly and make outrageous connections and know ridiculous amounts of trivia. At their inability to be her partner. Her _partner_.

And so they leave.

And so she waits.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N Disclaimer: I don't own them, I'm not making any money from this, etc._

**One**

Two months after their trip she runs into him at a bar. He looks tired, and he's on at least his fourth scotch.

"Eames." His voice is just slightly slurred. "What are you doing here?"

"Thought I'd stop by for a drink." She sits down beside him and orders a vodka martini, sucking it down as soon as she gets it.

"Thirsty?" he asks her, eyebrows raised and a quirk of a grin on his face.

"Tired." He nods, turning his attention back to his drink. "You?"

He scratches at his beard. "Same."

"How else have you been?" Careful. So careful.

He shrugs, doesn't answer. "So why are you really here?" he asks after a long awkward pause. "In this bar. You're pretty—pretty far from home."

"I like to change things up occasionally." Lie. Why else would she be refusing to work with anyone else? He knows she hates change.

He _has _to know it.

"Were you looking for me?"

Bastard.

She chooses to evade that by saying evenly, "I haven't heard from you in a while."

Fifth scotch gone. He throws some bills on the table and pushes himself away, sliding down off the bar stool. "I'll see you around, Eames. Take—take care." One last look and then he's out the door, his hand brushing her shoulder either on purpose or accidentally, she can't tell.

She finishes her second drink and has another before going back outside and realizing that she's too drunk to drive. Not that she's drunk (Eames' can hold their liquor pretty well), but she knows she's above the legal limit.

"Fuck," she mutters, stomping off to the street so she can try and hail a cab (even though, in the back of her mind, she knew exactly what she was doing when she ordered her third drink, had it all planned out from the moment she sat down beside him).

Fifteen minutes later she finds herself standing outside of Goren's apartment _Really, Alex? You're really going to do this?_

She knocks.

He doesn't open the door until she knocks again.

"Eames." Irritation and—could it be—_relief_ duel over his face. Guess which one wins? "What are you doing? Why are you here?"

"I had a little too much to drink. I can't drive."

He shifts, standing in the doorway so his body blocks the entrance into his home, into his life. "So why were you drinking at all, if you drove to the bar?"

Half wasted and he _still _has to figure everything out.

"I forgot. I didn't realize…I just wasn't thinking."

"Uh-huh." He stares at her until she gets uncomfortable and pulls her jacket tighter around herself.

"Look, Bobby, there's no heat in this hallway and I'm freezing. Can I come in until I sober up enough to drive home?"

She actually doesn't think he's going to let her in but then he steps back slightly, enough for her to come inside, but not enough that she can get by without touching him. "So what were you doing?" she asks to cover up that awkward little moment when her body brushes against his. "Where you, ah…am I interrupting anything?"

"Just another failed attempt at sleep." He motions towards the rumpled blanket on the couch and she blushes, because somehow it's oddly, wrongly intimate thinking of him trying to sleep. She can picture him staring up at the ceiling, mind churning, wishing he had his badge back, wishing he was back out on the streets with her, wishing he could let his mind rest and sleep, and so she blushes, and so he notices her blush. "Relax, Eames. It's not like I had a girl in there with me. I was just trying to sleep it off."

The thought of him with another girl (and then, briefly, she thinks of him with her) makes her blush even more so she's sure she's a very unattractive shade of red. She puts her hands up to her cheeks and covers her face. "I guess I'm drunker than I thought."

He wraps his arms around his elbows and hangs on, studying her. "You can sit down, you know."

She carefully makes her way over to his couch, because that's how she gets when she's liquored up, more careful and cautious, the extreme of how she is normally—and _why _can't she be the opposite, she thinks suddenly. Why can't she get rip-roaring drunk and take her clothes off and throw herself at emotionally unavailable men and wake up with a pounding hangover and bad memories? Why does she always have to be so fucking _contained_?

She kicks her shoes off and tucks her legs up, wrapping herself in Bobby's blanket. _Still warm_.

Bobby sits down beside her and suddenly she launches herself at him, crashing and then settling against him so he lets out a shocked grunt.

"God, take me out, Eames."

"You can handle it." She rests her head on his chest, tucking her head so it's just under his chin because hey, she's drunk, right? Right? Drunk and needing a place to lay her head, and his shoulder is just _right there_ and inviting and he won't push her away (she hopes) even though she can feel how tense he is. "I just need to sleep it off."

"Ah—okay. Okay."

She nestles in closer, getting comfortable.

"Al—Eames?"

"Shhh," she intones, closing her eyes, hoping. "Eames is sleeping."

"Well, Goren is uncomfortable."

_Fuck_.

She pushes herself off him and tries to summon up the energy for this. "Sorry—"  
"No, it's just—" He leans forward and pulls the pillow out from behind his back, tossing it on the floor. He slides away to the end of the couch and scrunches down a little before reaching out to her and pulling her back to him. "Okay."

"Is Goren comfortable now?" she demands, hoping her voice sounds confident and sarcastic as always, flippant, like this doesn't mean anything.

"Goren is…" he pauses, thinks. "More comfortable than before, he supposes."

"We sound like Elmo," she snorts, thinking of all the Saturday afternoons she's spent cuddled up to her nephew watching Sesame Street. "'Elmo wants to feed the fish!' 'Elmo wants to go to the store!' Patrick _loves_ him."

"Does Eames?"

She smiles. "No one's ever asked me before if I like Elmo."

"Don't you mean, 'No one's ever asked _Eames _before if she likes Elmo?'"

She snorts again and turns her head just a little so she can feel the thickness of his shirt rubbing against the corner of her mouth. "We all of us prefer the Count."

"The Count?"

"You know, the vampire with OCD, counts everything in sight—he reminds me of you, a little bit."

"Me?"

"Yeah. All the showing up at random places and pointing everything out, counting it and telling you about it in the process…you don't have the thick Transylvanian accent, though."

"I vant to suck jour _blood_," he murmurs just above her ear. She stifles a laugh into his shirt and relaxes against him even more, because he's just so warm and comfortable and they're talking about a quietly sarcastic kids show (always her favorite—huh) instead of all the other things that need to be said but can't be. "So the Count's your favorite, Eames."

"Mm-hmm."

"Well." His arm goes around her, solid and reassuring. "That's interesting."

"Indeed," she murmur. "Eames doesn't believe she's ever had a drunken Sesame Street conversation before."

He laughs and it sounds painful, rusty. "Eames needs to sleep it off."

So she does. All evening, in fact. Cuddled up to her partner and hearing his deep, even breathing above her ear lulling her back to sleep as soon as she starts to wake up.

At six fifteen the next morning she feels a nudge in her side and fingers on her forehead, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Eames…Eames."

She groans, scrunching up and wondering why all her muscles are so stiff. "What?"

"You have to get up for work."

"Don't," she mumbles, burrowing against him and throwing her arm across his stomach to prevent him from moving. "'S my weekend off."

"No—no, you have to work this weekend. You have next weekend off."

"Crap." She sits up and rolls her head from shoulder to shoulder, cracking her neck. "You're right. How do you know that? You tailing me, Bobby?"

"No, I just remember the schedule."

She leans forward so she can see his face that he's keeping turned away. "You miss it, don't you."

He nods. "Yeah. I—I do."

"You'll be back soon."

He stands up abruptly and turns away, heading off towards his bedroom. "I doubt it. You should go."

So she does.


	3. Chapter 3

**Two**

And then another month goes by, a month of silence and unanswered calls and unreturned messages. She knows he's still looking for Donny though, because one bitterly cold February morning she walks by Logan's desk and hears him say, "I'll check that out for ya, Goren."

_Goren_.

"What the hell was that?" she demands, glaring at him and his stupid tiny desk. "Are you talking to my partner?"

He holds his hands up defensively, swiveling back in his creaky chair. "He asked me to get a copy of Donny's driver's license for him."

"Why wouldn't he ask _me_?" she snaps, not so much at Logan as at the world in general and her stubborn partner in particular. "I'm his _partner_."

"I don't know! Ask _him_."

She glares at Logan and he glares right back, so she stomps off to her desk and grits her teeth and flips her phone open, just to check.

No messages.

Right.

At the end of the day there's a file folder on her desk with a yellow post-it note on top reading **Give this to Goren yourself, then**.

She smiles just a little as she picks it up, and when she leaves there's a muted blue post-it note on Logan's desk reading simply _Thanks_.

Half an hour later she's banging on his door and then waiting, waiting, waiting, clutching the folder stiffly and trying not to wrinkle it with her nervous, expectantly sweaty fingers.

Nothing.

So she tries the door and it's unlocked, which worries her. She pulls her piece (just in case) and calls his name once before storming in.

"Going to shoot me, Eames?" Bobby's sitting carefully on the couch, his face gray and lined.

"I _should_," she mutters, holstering her gun. "Why the hell did you ask _Logan _to look up something for you? I'm still your partner, Bobby, okay? You're still allowed to ask me for things. That is, if you'd ever _call_ me. Where the hell have you been?"

He just sits there under the barrage of her words, taking it, not answering.

She slaps the file down on his kitchen table and sinks down on the couch beside him. Jostling him a little, maybe, but certainly not enough that he has to lurch off to bathroom and vomit so loudly she can hear him through the door.

She stands outside the door and taps on it gently. "Bobby? You all right in there?"

"Fine."

But he doesn't come back out, so after three minutes of silence she knocks again. "Bobby?"

No answer.

"I'm coming in, okay?"

She swings open the door, half expecting him to be out cold on the floor.

He's on the floor but conscious, his back against the wall and his face buried in his hands.

"What's wrong?"

"'S just a bug or something. The flu, maybe. I don't know."

She sits down beside him. "You could have called me."

"So you could do what? Bring me chicken soup? I'm used to taking care of myself."

"Maybe that's your problem."

"That's the least of my problems, then."

"I see we're in quite the self-pitying mode," she murmurs, groping with her fingers trying to find his forehead lost under his hands. ""Let me see if you have a fever."

He jerks away and, wincing, stands up. "I'm _fine_, Eames. Maybe you should go so I can drown myself in how _pathetic _I am anymore."

"I didn't mean it like that—"

"Oh really? Then what did you mean?"

He waits for her answer but she can't give him one because she doesn't know, really. It was just one of those automatic things she says when she really wants to say _I'm worried I miss you I need you you're still my partner always_, but she can't, and so she settles for snarky and now silence.

His eyes turn cold and he walks out, leaving her standing in his bathroom, alone. "You're not pathetic," she finally says, following him.

He turns on her, wheeling around and clenching his hands into fists. "Oh no, of course not. I'm just a cop without a badge, or a gun, or…"

Her eyes widen. "Don't you _dare _say without a partner." All the anger leeches out of him and he steps back, defeated and tired. She steps towards him, feeling her breath rush out hot and furious against her mouth. "You were going to, weren't you? You—you—"

"It's just a matter of time," he says quietly. "They can't keep me on suspension forever, and I don't see any way that they'll let me back on the force. I have a meeting with the Chief of D's in two weeks, and I…I think that's going to be it."

She punches him, hard, in the arm. She didn't expect to but _God _she wanted to, to knock some sense back into him, and then her hand was swinging up and she nearly knocked him over. "_Don't say that!_" she shouts. "_You are still a cop, damn it!_"

He regains his balance but turns green and rushes back to the bathroom. Alex feels bad for half a second (punching a _sick _person?), but he deserved it. "_You're still my fucking partner_."

And then she waits, her entire body thrumming with anger and fear and anxiety and her nerves are shot to hell and she doesn't know how to _fix _this.

She first sees his hand, held out in front of him, and then the rest of his body emerges. "I can't do this right now, Eames. My head hurts. I'm going to bed."

"Okay." She lets out a shaky breath. "Okay. Go to bed, get some rest…_I'll call you_. And _you call me_. Okay?"

He nods. Convincingly? No.

"I mean it, Goren. We will be all right. You hear me?"

Another nod.

She leaves.


	4. Chapter 4

**Three**

"How are you doing?"

"Fine."

"Oh."

"You?"

"Fine."

"Good."

"Right."

"I have to go."

"Call me later."

So they've been having the odd phone conversation but it's nothing but ragged gossamer, thin, formerly silky, easily broken threads of meaningless words. It's hearing his voice, though, knowing he's alive, so she takes what she can get even if she's had more scintillating conversations with her bird, in the past. She's decided, in one late night bout of insomnia (more frequent these days and she can't decide why), that she isn't going to force anything else. If her partner doesn't want to see her than they won't see each other. She will not stake him out anymore, she will not barge into his apartment demanding meaningful interaction and sharing and connections where maybe there aren't connections after all. Maybe they only function together so well at work because they really do have complimentary skills.

So the days stretch on and work goes on and she goes on a couple of dates and solves a couple of cases and has a few minor spats with Ross and visits her nephew and has Sunday dinner with her parents and everything's as it was before, except she can't get rid of this constant dull weight in her chest, as tight and certain as a fist clenched in anger. She actually goes to the doctor about it, thinking, at first, that it's heartburn, thinking that she'll be stuck with some pill to wash down with her morning vitamin and calcium chew (osteoporosis runs in her family). But after a couple of tests and some probing questions she is informed that it's not heartburn, not acid reflux, not a hiaetal hernia, just—worst doctor phrase _ever_—"one of those things." She—_she_—actually gets mad when she hears that, because although she knows that medicine is not an exact science, it doesn't make any sense for the doctor to basically tell her that he has absolutely no idea what it is but it "should pass on its own, give it some time, wait it out and see, come back if you don't feel better." _They_ don't barge up to the victim's families and say, "We haven't got a fucking clue who killed the girl so we're just going to wait and see if maybe someone will feel guilty enough to turn themselves in," but apparently the medical equivalency is acceptable. And so the weight in her chest doesn't lessen but she doesn't go back, because what's the point in going through more tests and more worrying when she's going to be told, eventually, that it's stress, that handy diagnosis for all of life's little aches and pains with no adequate medical terminology.

_Maybe it's from not sleeping_, she thinks at her desk at one in the morning, rubbing the ache just below her throat with a closed fist and trying to do some research on a major tax firm suspected of inflating deductions and keeping part as a kickback. But it's just so _boring_, reading about tax law, as dry as…reading about tax law. She's been trying to pretend it's absolutely fascinating, the best thing she's ever read (an old SAT trick), but then she remembers that it didn't work 21 years ago and so she reaches for her old reliable friend, coffee. _Or maybe from all the caffeine_. But it's lukewarm and disgusting, so she gives up and lays her head down on her desk.

_Ten minute nap_.

She doesn't expect that she'll end up in tears but she does, letting them run down her face and fall vertically on to her blotter, not caring enough to wipe them away. _God, Alex, sobbing over tax law_, she thinks, trying to make herself see the absurdity of it all. She's too tired, though, so she curls up a little over her desk and rests her head in her arms. Goes to sleep.

Wakes up when she senses a shadow hovering behind her and then a large warm hand on her back. "Eames?"

That voice rolling into her. That warm wavering familiar statement of her last name.

_Bobby_.

She's dreaming. She has to be, and it's worse than she thought—_maybe it is stress after all_—because now she's seeing her partner in front of her.

"You all right?"

_I'm going insane_.

"Bobby?"

He crouches down beside her, graceful even though his knees crack as loud as a gunshot. "What's wrong? Why were you crying?"

"I—wasn't."

"You _were_." He examines her closely, his jaw working. "I can tell. What happened?"

It feels like everything's attacking her in this fog of sleep interrupted—the room is too synthetically bright, there's too many words on her computer screen, his voice is too loud, his tone too insistent, his gaze too penetrating.

"Nothing. I don't—I don't—what are you _doing _here?" She rubs her eyes, her face, trying to wake up.

"I came back for a book I left in my desk." He staggers to his feet and holds up **The Ins and Outs of Handwriting Analysis**. "I, uh, needed it."

"Why?"

"Why were you crying?"

They stare at each other, locked into their unwillingness to answer.

"I got Frank to give me one of Donny's old school assignments," he admits at last. "I thought maybe…I don't know, I could learn something from it."

"So you come back at one in the morning so you don't have to run into anyone you don't want to see."

"It's not that." Silence stretches on, tense and uncomfortable. "Your turn. The tears…?"

"Just drop it, Goren." She presses her palm flat against her forehead and closes her eyes, a sharp headache beginning in her temple. "I fell asleep, okay? Tax law is not my idea of a fun bedtime story."

"You're a shitty liar, Alex."

Anger bursts through her, giving her nervous system a much needed boost of adrenaline and enabling her to shove her chair back and stand up, leaning towards him with both hands on her desk.

"Yeah, well, at least I let people in sometimes," she snaps, raking the hair out of her face. "I _connect _with other people. I don't have to be this island unto myself, trying to shoulder the whole fucking world without even wincing."

His laugh is completely devoid of humor. "Really? Really, Detective? And when would this be? Who, exactly, do you _let in_? 'Cause the Eames _I_ know doesn't really let herself be affected by anything, she just keeps plugging along, determined to be the best detective possible—and you're good, you know you're good, but see, all this _work _doesn't exactly leave much room for a social life. Your excuse is that you're _busy_, that you devote so much time to the job that you don't have anything left over to connect with anyone else—"

"At least I date! At least I try to open myself up for the possibility of something! I was married, okay? We were planning on a future, and children, and—" her voice wavers but she ignores it and keeps plunging. "When was the last time _you _did that? When was the last time you even got _laid_, Goren?"

They're both breathing heavily, eyes flashing, and then Alex realizes that she just demanded to know about her partner's sex life. She turns away, rubbing the pain that just got larger in her chest. "Forget it. I'm going home."

She storms off, leaving her partner alone in the squad room, clutching his book. She bypasses the elevator in favor of the dimly lit stairs, flying down them so fast she doesn't have time to notice that she can't see anything.


	5. Chapter 5

_Epilogue_

And then the next time she sees him is when she nearly blows his head off. Gun in her hand, finger on the trigger, ready to shoot, to take out yet another bad guy, and then it's _Bobby_. She keeps remembering the feel of the trigger, the involuntary little spasm her index finger gave when she saw it was him. And the click of her mind, that little _oh_ when everything fell into place ("two big white dudes" "maybe you should find out what your _partner's _up to").

And now he's back at his desk, facing her, quietly thrilled to be back at work but afraid to show it because he knows she's still so _angry _at him. And why wouldn't she be? All she can think of (she's started seeing it in her _dreams_) is pointing the gun right at Bobby's face. And she keeps hearing her words tossed out at him over and over again (_All your wounds are self-inflicted I hope it was worth it Detective Detective Detective _Detective).

She can't look at him. She can't talk to him. And now her chest hurts more than ever, a constant throbbing ache too pointed and pained to be medical (especially since it gets worse every time she looks over and she sees _him_).

He's been trying to make it up to her in his own way, leaving little gifts on her desk, candy and a funny little plastic frog and one perfect lotus flower and a new, 3 sectioned notebook—he's always had such a thing for notebooks ("It's the blankness of it," he explained to her once after she started to complain after an hour spent in Staples. "The _possibilities_. Anything can happen between the covers, and it's all in your control").

But all the paper in the world can't make up for the fact that she's still seething, about not being told what he was doing, about nearly shooting him, about how he thinks he can make it up to her and they'll be fine, like it's not a big deal, like she just needs some time to sulk and then they'll be partners again.

So maybe the little blip at the diner did count as an event after all, because if the criteria for seeing him and having it count was that something needed to happen, that something needed to change afterwards, then apparently none of their encounters counted (and then by reversal all of them would count—if there's nothing to make it significant then it doesn't really matter if it's significant or not, it's just something that happens, like waking up or going to the post office for stamps).

So that's it then.

Everything's back to normal.

Nothing's changed.

Hey partner.

Any plans for the weekend?

You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.

Are you all ri—

Never mind.

I'll be late tomorrow. Doctor's appointment.

Just so you know.

We should probably focus on the case.

Hey look that store has Tickle Me El—

Actually, I think I prefer Grover after all.

_~~Complete~~_

**A/N. So I think I'm done with this series (if two can be considered a series), unless I change my mind in the future (it's been known to happen). Coming up: probably the second installment of the Angst Quadrant (post-Blind Spot post-Endgame post-Untethered post-Frame--I only got into CI this year so I have to make up for lost time), or maybe the case file I'm working on. Thanks for reading!**


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